


Find A Way To Lie

by Rysler



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Sanctuary (TV), Superman (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rysler/pseuds/Rysler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two women have an encounter in the 1950s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find A Way To Lie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Geonn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/gifts).



Sometime during the 1950s…

I should have known why she was there. A woman like that in a suit when the rest of us were wearing slacks. A woman who didn't belong, but who was asking questions anyway. Just like I asked questions. I figured her for a reporter, but she wasn't.

She had the eye of everyone in the room when I walked in. I made my way to the bar because that's where I go first. I pushed my way through the haze of cigarette smoke, squinting in the dim light. The radio was on, playing jazz. The haze made everything gray. No wonder the world was in black and white back then.

She wore black, which matched her hair. I saw her before I heard her, and I'd already lost my breath when her dulcet, British tones washed over me.

She was speaking quietly. So of course I had to get close.

"Just tell him," she told the bartender. "I can help him."

"Ain't nobody can help him, lady," the bartender said.

She reached across the bar and covered his hand with her own. Pressing it. She looked strong to me.

"I can," she enunciated.

Nice accent.

The bartender didn't believe her.

"Hi," I said.

She looked in my direction.

I smiled. "Buy you a drink?"

"I'm a bit in a hurry," she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

She looked tired and she settled onto the barstool next to her. I waited until she nodded at me. I'd like to think that I was just that intriguing.

I signaled to the bartender and he poured us out some gin and tonics, because we were women.

"So, tell me," she said, when she'd had her sip, "Have you heard of Superman?"

That this was the question she asked everyone in those days. A woman who knows how to ask indiscriminate questions soon finds indiscriminate tongues.

"Who hasn't?" I asked.

She lost interest in me then, and turned to look at herself in the mirror beyond the bar. Limp hair, dark eyes, a haggardness that showed age even if there were no wrinkles on her face.

She said, "I mean, really, doesn't anyone know him? He's too visible to be that much of a secret."

I didn't know how to answer her, and I could have killed the bartender when he did it for me. All my dirty looks didn't faze him.

He just said, "That's Lois Lane. Don't you read her byline? The only one to get an exclusive with the 'Man in the whole damn city. And let me tell you, everyone in Metropolis read that article."

"He's not exactly a secret," I demurred, sipping my drink. The gin sparkled and danced on my tongue. Good stuff. Didn't insult my intelligence.

"He ain't anyone's best friend, either," the bartender said.

"Must be lonely," the woman murmured.

So I asked my go-to question. I guessed it was my turn.

"So, what do you do, Miss--" I let my voice trail off expectantly.

A honed talent, looking curious and friendly. difficult for a woman in a pants suit in a bar full of monsters.

What people don't know about bars, whether they're full of monsters or just full of pricks, is that no one really cares what comes in, unless it's a cop or someone they know. Even ladies of general attractiveness can have a drink at the bar without too much molestation, unless there's an air of desperation about the place. But it was too early to be that drunk. The monsters were still hopeful the women would come to them.

"Magnus. Helen Magnus." She extended her hand. Perfectly manicured with smooth fingers, like touching a pillow or a silk robe.

Perfectly British.

I shook, keeping my grip firm and brief. Perfectly American. And I continued staring at her with raised eyebrows.

She let go and said, "I run a sanctuary."

"In England?" I asked.

She smiled. "Somewhere. I thought I heard someone in need of help."

The bartender snorted. "Superman? He don't need no sanctuary, lady."

I hated to be as hasty. I pursed my lips.

Helen smiled. "No, not him. Though I would disagree with your premise. He is, after all, a weapon in an age of turmoil."

The bartender snorted and moved down the bar. The conversation had suddenly become too high-brow for him.

Helen turned her gaze fully on me. "You're a reporter?"

"Investigative reporter. For the Daily Planet."

"Then you know far more than you write," Helen said.

"Just as you know far more than you say," I said.

I cocked my head expectantly. Pissing people off was part of the job.

She kept smiling.

I finished my drink with a flourish and said, "Since your friend isn't here, let's say we go somewhere else."

"Wherever you want, Miss Lane."

"Please. Call me Lois."

* * *

I took her back to my place. She read what I had on the Man of Steel while I fixed us martinis.

I watched her suck the olive off the toothpick and nearly missed the question she asked after, her lips moving ever so succulently to form words.

"What?" I asked.

She licked the tip of the toothpick. "Tell me, do you know anyone like Superman?"

"Men who can fly and shoot laser beams with their eyes and take a bullet in the chest?"

She shook her head. "No. Men who are different."

I said, "No. I don't. I mean, when he first appeared in Metropolis everyone went looking for the next one. You know? Kin or cousin or son. But he's unique. Like a snowflake."

"But there are millions of snowflakes."

"Sure." I drank the rest of my martini. I contemplated a cigarette.

I didn't smoke.

She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again.

That did it. I wasn't made of steel, after all. I got up and went to my file cabinet and pulled out some manila envelopes and handed them to her.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Crank file. People from all over the damn country send me pictures. Personal accounts. Diaries they found in their attic about what goes bump in the night. They see Superman and they want to compete, you know? They want to be famous. And Superman is only as famous as the stories about him. My stories."

Helen nodded. She was listening, not agreeing. That made me nervous. But the file was out of the cabinet now. Nothing to do but let it go.

Still I said, "Usually some guy in his basement dressed up as a wolf. They're yours. I mean, better to have them out of my hair."

Helen stood, setting the files on the coffee table. She said, "Thank you, Lois. Please tell me. How can I ever repay you?"

* * *

She repaid me with grace I had hoped for and gentleness that was unexpected. She explored my naked body with great, frustrating interest, cupping my breast just when I wanted her to touch my neck, stroking the sole of my foot when I hoped to draw her up to my knee. When lust propelled her against me, seeking all of me at once, I could embrace her fully.

Except for that moment, that pinnacle reached in our brief relationship, she hardly let me touch her, flinching as my fingers fluttered along her arm. Some old injury. Some invisible wound. I kissed her instead. Her lips were generous and sweet against mine. Her tongue offered the heat I had reached for elsewhere. So I gave into it all again, not quite on my terms, but that was part of the job, too.

Sweaty, tangled in the sheets that had cost me as much as the condominium, while I was thinking about the bar we had met in, I remembered that she hadn't been in there for me.

She knew what I was thinking. She cleared her throat.

I met her eyes, deep black eyes that had so many stories for me to tell the world. She shut them. Her forehead wrinkled.

I exhaled and asked, "Yeah? Out with it."

"Just--please. Give him a note."

"All right. I can do that," I said.

I guess I owed her.

One night's pleasure can buy a lot.

But she was gone I ripped open the envelope she'd given me and pulled out the note.

I'm Helen Magnus. I believe we can help each other. If you are ever in need of sanctuary, call this number.

And then a line of five numbers. I copied it down, painstakingly trying to imitate Helen's handwriting. Then I slipped the copy into the pages of Moby Dick and took the original to Superman.

* * *

High on a rooftop, where I imagined the air was thin but it probably wasn't, he read the note without comment. Cool and collected, that was him.

Drove me nuts.

"Well?" I asked, putting my hands on my hips.

"There's a second message. Hidden to your eyes."

"Like, invisible ink?"

"Something like that." He wasn't looking at me.

"What does it say?"

He didn't answer. He looked toward the sun. The clear day made him look chiseled and hard. Where he was cool as steel, Helen had been warm. Flesh. She had been tender. And vulnerable--

I closed my eyes. "Superman," I said.

But there was no answer.

I just saw the sky.

At home, I called the number, but there was no one on the other end. The operator said it wasn't a number at all. Gibberish.

So what. I kept the note. Every so often I would read it, and wonder where Helen Magnus was.

The only story I ever encountered that I had not been able to tell.

END


End file.
